In recent years in the Netherlands, a lot of attention has been paid to the question of how municipal councils maintain inter-municipal cooperation, which has also become increasingly important because of decentralizations in the social domain. Other forms of collaborating governance have received much less attention. This article focuses primarily on these, until now, largely underexposed forms of collaborative governance because, apart from inter-municipal cooperation and participation of Dutch municipalities in different organizations based on private law, modern municipalities maintain a variety of cooperative relations with organizations in local society. The municipal board and the mayor often play a key role in the web of these cooperative relations, but what is the role of the municipal council? In what way do municipal councils in the Netherlands institutionally shape control and accountability in (intra-municipal) collaborative governance? The article gives an overview of the rules of the game that are currently being used in Dutch municipalities for the control and accountability of intra-municipal collaborative governance. This inventory may be a point of reference for municipal councils, individual councilors and registrars of the council in their search for new rules of the game for control and accountability for different forms of ‘displaced’ local governance. The aim of this broad inventory is to outline possible interesting and innovative forms of control and accountability; it is not about proven ‘best practices’.

Reading the most recent and most revealing book of Rinus van Schendelen leads to the conclusion that lobbying is not the strongest side of the Netherlands, which is rather strange for a small country with an external orientation that goes back for centuries. As one of the (six) founding fathers of European cooperation the Netherlands could not hold this special position in the EU. The money-driven attitude of the Netherlands may be profitable short-term, but is harmful for the position of the country and for its decentralized authorities (municipalities and provinces). The Dutch political scientist Rinus van Schendelen is well known for his long years of investigation into ‘lobbying’, but what in fact can be called public affairs (PA). In his older work Van Schendelen discusses PA mainly as a managerial, instrumental, Machiavellian means for steering private and public interests. In his new book he further develops this approach by investigating processes which can contribute to the use of PA instruments for sustainable effects. The new book clearly shows that nowadays the intelligent use of social media is a necessary supplement to the intelligent use of traditional PA instruments. Because of the influence of social media an adequate training of PA professionals is urgently needed in social psychology and other relevant disciplines to prevent floor tourists and other adventurers entering the PA scene.

Municipal amalgamations form a red thread through the history of local government in the Netherlands. With varying intensity, this country was continuously confronted with adjustments of the municipal scale. Where once the focus was rather one-sided on the minimum number of inhabitants of a municipality, we see that since the nineties questions were asked about the amalgamation policy. From now on a lack of administrative power had to be demonstrated before an amalgamation would be carried through. These critical remarks however didn’t lead to a downfall in the number of municipal amalgamations. Amalgamation and merger will always continue in the Netherlands. The Flemish policy on amalgamation appears to be quite different. Since the large-scale merger operation in 1976 Flanders was no more confronted with municipal amalgamations. The former Flemish government however, announced at its appointment in 2009 that it would encourage voluntary mergers of municipalities with financial and administrative incentives. The present Flemish government treads the same path. The incentives put in place by the former Flemish legislature are even increased. They even appear to bear fruit. In the provinces Limburg and East-Flanders several municipalities have indicated to investigate a merger. Some of them even have taken the principal decision to merger in the municipal councils involved. This article describes and compares the municipal amalgamation policies of the Netherlands and Flanders. The authors also investigate what both can learn from each other.

Regional networks are often used by the central government in the Netherlands as a way of translating national purposes into regional action. At the same time regional networks increasingly arise from the bottom up. In short, it gets busy in the region. This article describes research on regional networks encouraged by the national government to handle complex issues in the domain of education and the labor market. The central question of this article is the way in which stimulating regional cooperation can be used effectively by the central government. Thirteen networks are studied with the help of interviews, questionnaires and data from social networks. The research findings show that in these networks that are encouraged from the top down, there is a tension between achieving short-term results and building cooperative relations, and that a sense of urgency in the region is an important prerequisite for success. This calls for more bottom-up co-determination of the policy agenda and the pace. In addition, there appeared to be a strong overlap between seemingly separate networks, thematically as well as in terms of staffing, which again offers opportunities for creating synergy. The findings call for using these ‘meta networks’ in the formation of networks. Both notions lead to some strategies for the effective use of regional networks.

Last year the first Dutch municipalities declared themselves TTIP-free and the list is growing. The count now stands at 27 Dutch municipalities, three Dutch provinces and two Dutch water boards. TTIP means that foreign companies can be confident that investments in a host country are secure and cannot simply be eliminated or nullified. But what if investments are at odds or will be become at odds with measures a government has taken or intends to take, for example to protect the environment? Does the government still have that freedom under TTIP? Or is it only if it is prepared to pay large amounts of money? Comparable practices show that it may involve significant amounts of money. What can we expect from TTIP in this respect? The question central in this essay is if and, if so to what extent, does the investment protection that TTIP offers, in combination with the arbitration that is foreseen in the treaty, impede local authorities in taking decisions in the general interest.